Acronyms are used widely in all kinds of writing as a convenient shorthand way of representing often word phrases, company names, chemical names, etc.
Many acronyms have become so familiar that generally people understand to what the acronym refers but may not actually know what the acronym stands for. In many cases an acronym may have a different expansion depending on the context in which the acronym is used.
According to well established writing conventions acronyms should be introduced along with their accompanying acronym expansion the first time an acronym is used in a text. If such conventions are not adhered to readers may have difficulty understanding an acronym, especially if the acronym is not one the reader is familiar with or if the acronym has more than one possible acronym expansion depending on the context in which the acronym is used.
Increasing amounts of information and documentation are available, for example, through web pages accessible over the Internet. However, much of this documentation is not written according to well established writing conventions. Accordingly, the understanding of acronyms within such documentation may be particularly problematic.